All the Sun For You

A mom, two boys, a husband, and a whole lot of adventure!


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I Celebrated with Cake

What a day!  M is still sick, but on the mend.  In the last 8 months, B and I have often asked, while changing a diaper, “do you think that’s diarrhea?”  Well – let me just say that now I KNOW what that looks like and we’ve been lucky enough to avoid it until now.  It was not a good morning, but the rest of the day made up for it.

"What, do my pants bother you? Well then change them!"

Because of the unpleasant diapers, I limited M’s food to just oatmeal today.  He was throwing up a bit yesterday too so I figured I’d give him something smooth and simple so that he could throw it up easily if needed.  He seemed to like the oatmeal quite a bit!

"I could live on this stuff!"

B is traveling for work but he got the baby gate installed before he left.  Thank goodness because this happened today:

"Maybe if I shake it, it will open..."

M took two super good naps – I believe because he was so tired from being sick.  I was watching him on the monitor as he tried to fall asleep and I got to see him trying to pull himself up in his crib for the first time.  I took the photo to send to B.  I shouldn’t have done that, because I think that B is probably losing sleep RIGHT NOW worrying about M launching himself over the side of the crib.  We’re nowhere near that yet – and will get the mattress lowered in a couple weeks (I’m insistent that we keep it where it is because this is a normal part of development which helps lead to walking).

"Are you watching me?"

My day ended with one happy baby:

And a mini cake:

Why the cake you ask?  WELL – this is the last mini cake from one of my baby showers last summer.  I’ve been saving it and I have not really been sure why.  Today, after so many nursings to keep M hydrated, countless diaper changes, and multiple close, warm snuggles, I was really feeling appreciative of this gift of a little boy that is in my life.  I am doing what I was born to do – what I worked so hard to do.  I think taking such vigilant care of him today made me really think back to what it took to get not just a baby – but to get HIM – and I wanted to celebrate that with cake!


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10

M is sick.  Not the teething kind – the real kind.  He’s had colds before, but this is different.  He’s had a fever (broken with some Tylenol), has lost his appetite, took a super long nap, and throws up quite a bit.  He’s not seeming dehydrated, but I’ve been feeding him quite a bit to make sure that doesn’t happen.  Amazingly though – he is still quite happy!  There are moments of instant tears for no reason (other than assuming he feels crappy), but for the most part, he’s been pretty content.

My nephew’s 10th birthday is tomorrow.  I cannot believe it!  He is the first grandchild on my side of the family and I was thinking today about the phone call I got when he was born.  It was so special and fun to be getting a nephew!  The name they chose for him was not on their list, so when my BIL told me his name, I was stunned and questioned back, “IAN?”  He thought I didn’t like it.  I loved it!  I still do – a lovely name for the first little boy who stole my heart!  Double digits for Ian – time flies by so quickly!

B is out of town until Thursday, so it’s just M and me for the next two days.  Is it selfish that I sort of love my time alone with him?  Seems kind of silly considering that I spend every single day with M – but I do love any extra one-on-one time that I get.  As I learned with Ian, babies grow all too quickly and M will be 10 before I know it!


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Random Updates

My “always happy” baby had a rough day.  We think M is teething again – he is just miserable.  I started a new fitness program today and was so excited to take him back to his old daycare for an hour while I worked out.  M is very social and LOVED daycare while he was there, and I was excited for him to see his old friends and have some fun interaction.  He was crying when I picked him up and that hurt my heart. We spent the day snuggling in the rocker, and strolling around the mall.

“Please get me some Advil!”

In other news, we now have a baby gate installed at the top of the stairs.  RELIEF!  We need to leave it open for the kitties to use their restroom downstairs, but we’ll close it when M is cruising around up here on the main floor.  Everyone (but the kitties) is happy about this.

I got the speaker for my jogging stroller just in time for our big stroller debut tomorrow!  Everything is all setup and ready to go – I just need to pump up the tires and we’re good to go!  I’ve got my MP3 player charging as I type so that we don’t run out of tunes tomorrow.

I bought M’s swimsuit today!  It was on sale so I bought the whole ensemble (trunks, top, hat, sandals).  It is very cute!  I am thinking of taking him swimming at the YMCA tomorrow afternoon.  We are signing up for “water babies” swimming lessons that start at the end of the month, so I want him to be comfortable with the pool before we start that.

I sort of made dinner tonight!  I bought a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store that was too dry (sorry, B!) and made fresh asparagus to go with it.  B decided we needed dessert so got out a leftover cupcake from our trip to Omaha yesterday.  It was divine!  M had stew, peas, and pears.  Oh – and Advil!


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8 Months Old – And the Nursery is Finally Done?!

M’s nursery was a labor of love involving a lot of people.  My mom made his bedding set and window treatments; my sister made his name sign; my mother-in-law bulked up his woodland stuffed animal collection; B insisted that I have a rocker; and many artists on Etsy did prints, decals, and the mobile for his room.  We did not want to go with a commercial theme or anything popular, and we wanted it to be gender neutral so that every child would use the same nursery.  It all started with a quilt and growth chart from Red Envelope that centered around woodland animals that I’d bought a year or so before we even started trying to get pregnant.  The finishing touches were the newborn photos taken by White Linen Photography.  We’ve had the photos framed for a long time, but they’ve moved from space to space until we could get them properly hung.

I’m so happy with how it all turned out!

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Four Generations

Today was a great day – we drove back to my hometown to see one of my mother’s greatest friends, and to stop in to see my grandpa.  I love my grandpa – he and I have always had a terrific relationship!  I can’t imagine going back to my hometown and not stopping in for a visit.  Grandpa loves, loves, loves babies so M’s visit with him today made Grandpa smile from ear to ear.  Heck, Grandpa’s probably still smiling right now!

My dad suggested we take a four generation photo.  I am so glad he did because we will treasure it forever!  We never did get one with my grandma, which makes me very sad.  She was always too sick for us to bring M by to see her before she passed away.  I need to let that go and just be thankful that I still can get photos with Grandpa  🙂


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Milestone

We hit a major milestone tonight.  We take M out to dinner on an almost nightly basis (remember, I cook for M but not for B – but that is going to change this week!) – and he sits through it like a trooper every night and eats his meal, plays with his toys, makes friends with strangers, etc.  He very rarely fusses and we are told quite regularly what a great, well-behaved baby he is out in public.  We could not agree more (and yes, we know we’re very lucky!). At lunch today, we were told that, “he’s a dandy!”  That tickled me!

We typically go to restaurants where you get one course and you’re out of there, just to play it safe and to not extend M past his limit.

Tonight?  Tonight we went out for a nice dinner.  B even got dressed up (and he looked terrific!).  We went out for a meal that consisted of three courses and M was his typical, normal, happy self.  All of this after very limited nap time today.  We arrived around 6:30 and left at 8:00.  Around 7:50, we had to take him out of his high chair so he could look around and flirt with more people – but he was not at all fussy.

I am so proud!  I have always wanted to have the kids who can sit through a meal and enjoy the family time.  I think we have one of those kids  🙂  I think it’s 50% luck (M is naturally very laid back) and 50% experience.  We’ve made this a priority since the day after he came home from the hospital, and I’m so glad we did!


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Complete

Our good friend, Denise, came by tonight to capture M’s bedtime routine.  It sure was fun!  He’s doing so many cute things between 6:00 and 8:00 at night.  He loves his bath, he’s trying new foods, he belly laughs at the cats playing together – it’s truly turned into the best time of the day.  We’ve learned from experience that just because he does something cute today, does not mean he’ll do it again tomorrow – or EVER again.  Therefore, we try to capture these things in photos and video right away in case he stops doing them.  Tonight was all about capturing his cuteness at bed time – and there was a lot of cuteness to capture!

Nights like these make me think about the future.  I think about having more kids, when we’ll have more kids, how that will affect M, how soon is too soon, etc.  I know I posted just last night about child spacing – but I am honest when I say this:  If this is it for us – if M is destined to be an only child – I am just fine with that.  He is such a dream come true, such a sweet baby who lights up every room he enters.  I surely want more kids for obvious reasons, but the main one is so M can be a big brother and have a sibling.

If another baby is not in the cards for us, that is OK – because we are complete with M!


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When We Hurt Our Babies

I wanted to write about this earlier today because I was so devastated about it, but I couldn’t post it yet because I hadn’t told my husband what had happened.

My worst mothering nightmare up until this point happened today.  M fell down the stairs.  It hurts just writing it.

I was playing with him on the floor while his breakfast was heating up in the microwave (amaranth and plum swirl – he loves it!).  He had spent the prior 10 minutes on his back playing quietly with his toys, so when the microwave timer sounded, I figured he’d stay put long enough for me to get his breakfast out to let it cool off just a bit.  I was wrong.  I heard two thuds and I felt sick to my stomach.

We have an open staircase to our basement with a landing after 6 steps.  When I heard the thuds, I gasped and looked around the corner to where he was supposed to be.  I was hoping the sound I heard came from a couple of arguing cats.  M was not there.  That’s when I heard the cry as I ran down the steps.  From the sounds of things, he surfed head first down the stairs on his belly because there were no rolling thuds.  THANK G0D!  He was on the landing with his head up against the trim.  The first thud was him hitting the landing.  The second was his head hitting the trim.

Ugh.

He did not wail, but he cried for about 10 seconds in my arms before calming down and then smiling at me.  I checked him over for physical harm and it appears that he only has the one scuff on his forehead.  I just cannot believe that it happened, but more importantly, I cannot believe we were so lucky that he’s so unharmed.

M happily ate his breakfast and played afterwards as though nothing had happened.  But I will never forget it.  I hurt my baby today, and that makes me cry.

I told B about it prior to dinner with a friend.  I didn’t want him to notice the scuff on M’s head and ask me in front of our friend what had happened, and I certainly couldn’t lie about it.  I arrived at dinner before our friend and said, “something happened today that you need to know.  M fell down the stairs.  He’s fine, thank G0d.  I’m sorry.”  I said it with tears in my eyes, on the verge of crying.  B handled it well.  He said that my own agony about the situation requires nothing else to be said.  He is right.  Nothing he could say (and he wouldn’t say anything hurtful to me about it, but I expected him to be upset) could possibly make me feel worse than the memory I’ll have about this for the rest of my life.  I will always know the sound of those two thuds.

M, when you read this entry when you’re older, please know how sorry I am!  And please don’t blame some future bad grades or something on this incident.  Please know that I’ll be doing plenty of that on me own  😉


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Resolution Coming in 2 Weeks

I took a big step today and made an appointment with our RE for March 13th to discuss when to start the process on Baby #2.  I meant to call back in January to set this appointment up for March, but I kept putting it off for some reason.  I don’t really know the reason – I just know that I wasn’t ready to commit to a discussion on the topic.

My dilemma is this – I’m still nursing M.  I only planned to nurse him for 6 months, but it’s gone so well (not to mention that I truly enjoy it!) that I just kept doing it.  I’ve been pumping all along because I figured I’d need to stop prior to his first birthday to do all the pre-testing for an FET if we wanted to space the kids two years apart.  So I have a deep freezer full of breast milk for when I stop nursing M.  The problem is that I don’t want to stop nursing him.  I enjoy it.  I love that I’m the only one who can provide this for him and that it affords me 4-6 long snuggles a day with my favorite little guy.  I will stop when he’s a year old because I want him to have the independence to be able to go on play dates and drink from sippy cups (and keep on playing while doing so) versus cozying up to dear old Mom when he’s thirsty or hungry.  I am emotionally ready to stop at one year.  I’m not emotionally ready to stop prior to one year.

I wasn’t too concerned about this because I figured our RE would want me to stop nursing for, say, one month before testing and then moving onto a cycle.  Stopping at one year would then put a cycle in August and that would be that – if it worked, the kids would be 22-23 months apart which would be great.  However, I saw on someone’s blog last night that their RE won’t do the testing until she’s been done nursing for 1-3 months.  That is what gave me pause.  That is what has me upset because if that’s the case, if I quit nursing at the end of June when M is 12 months old, I wouldn’t be able to test until he’s 13-15 months old and then cycle probably a month later (so between him being 14 and 16 months old).

All of this has then led me to think about child spacing and the fact that IF-ers don’t really have the opportunity to plan such things.  When you require IVF (or an FET), you only get 3, maybe 4, chances at conceiving in a given year.  If we cycled in August (which is my current plan) and it worked, then the kids would be 23 months apart.   Now, I’m no newbie to IVF so I don’t expect it to work the first time.  Then, you get pushed out to late November, which would put the kids 26 months apart (which would be good).  If that didn’t work, then we’d push out to March which would put them 29/30 months apart, and so on, and so on.  Very quickly, your child spacing plans could go to crap and you could easily end up with kids spaced way further apart than you had hoped.  Or – maybe it would work the first time and the rest would be history.

I just don’t know what to do.  This is why we’re meeting with our wonderful RE on the 13th.  I’m actually excited to see him – I like him a lot!

Until then, I’m just going to keep on nursing M and enjoying every minute of it (even the minutes that occur in the middle of the night because he’s not the best sleeper!).


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Photograph

As I scurry to put the most important memories of M on this new blog, so that I don’t forget too many things, I find myself walking down memory lane.  The birth photos I posted just a bit ago had not been looked at, in their entirety, in months.  It was so fun to go back and look at them all again.  So many memories are packed into those 305 photos, it’s amazing.  I actually don’t remember too much about M’s birth because I had a scheduled C-section (breech baby) and as the drugs wore off, my memory apparently started to fade as well.  I remember everything up until being wheeled out of the delivery room – and that was when it all went blank (or rather – very, very foggy).  I honestly couldn’t remember holding M for the first time.  I knew I’d done it, but I couldn’t remember anything about it.  His birth photos brought it all back for me, and I am so grateful for them.  I am grateful for our photographer, Denise, who told me stories about each photo so that I could remember even more of the most important day of my life.

Photographs are very important to me.  Obviously, right?  I hired a photographer to attend my birth for 9 hours!  Denise and her girls have become like family to us, and we see her weekly.  A week without seeing Denise is a very sad week for me.  We are two peas in a pod – and M LOVES her.  He talks to her in a way that he does not talk to anyone else.  I truly think he knows that she was there when he was born – I think the sound of her voice is burned into his memory from that very first day.

Denise is a phenomenal photographer.  I have nothing but wonderful things to say about her and her business partner, Lindy.  They, in my opinion, are the premier baby/child/family photographers in the Central Iowa region – and you would likely agree with me if you checked out their site.  I am so lucky to have found her!  She puts us all at ease and can get photos of M that are priceless (well – they do have a price – but I’m willing to pay it!).  Denise and Lindy have their own blog and they document many of their sessions there.  M has been the topic of many a White Linen blog!  I am so grateful for this because it allows me to share M’s photos with everyone without having to post them to FB or attach them to emails, etc.

Here are M’s newborn photos.  These were taken when he was just a week old.  Breathless!  I just love them!

We had 4 month photos takes, and a few of them are actually on White Linen’s home page.  M won a contest to be on their home page – makes me very proud  😉

We had 6-7 month photos taken a while back right after Christmas, and they’re the ones up on Denise’s blog right now.  The session in her studio (teal background) could not have gone better!  I learned that the trick to wonderful, smiley baby photos is to keep your baby up until they’re over-tired and WILD.  It made for a very rough afternoon, but the photos are the best we’ve ever gotten of M!  When Denise came to the house a couple of weeks later to take the photos of M on the bed (we use that bed as our “ages and stages” prop – meaning we take his picture there at each milestone to show his growth), she pulled out her camera and took photos of him and me playing and just enjoying each other in the house.  The candid photos are by far my favorites!  I can’t stop looking at them!

Denise has offered to take “lifestyle photos” of M, B, and me.  I have always wanted a photographer to just follow me around and take photos of my favorite moments (hence the birth photos), and that’s exactly what she’ll be doing!  She wants to capture M’s bedtime routine so we’re starting with dinner (there will be split pea soup or the quinoa to capture his “I hate this food” look!) and then going into bath time, book time, and bedtime.  I CANNOT WAIT!

Denise has also offered to do the same thing for when we do our next round of IVF for M’s potential sibling, and if our RE says OK, we’ll be taking her up on this (she is such a great friend to us!).  I think it’s really important to capture the process, the tears, the joys, the heartache, the EVERYTHING that has to do with the IF struggle.  As much as I hated our IF process, I would not trade it for the world because it brought M to us (not to mention that it taught me so many things).  We are infertile – it’s part of who we are as a family – so why not document it in pictures?  Most people’s pregnancy journeys start with good old-fashioned s-e-x and a positively pink pee stick.  Yay for them (truly!)!  They may take a photo of said pee stick and then move onto fun stuff like ultrasound photos and belly measurements.  We started with blood draws, and tests, and drugs, and needles, and unpleasant ultrasounds, etc.  I want it all captured next time, even if we fail.

I’ll leave you with our family photos, which I have permission to post.  They are sprinkled with a couple of shots here at the house, as well as two in his Halloween costume.  The family photos were taken on a rather cold day in November, but you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at them.  As I write this entry, I am surrounded by these photos in my living room.  They make me so very happy and warm  🙂